Tony Mechelynck wrote: > On 11/07/10 16:04, Bram Moolenaar wrote: > > > > This appears to happen more often these days: I send a message to a user > > and some blacklist system blocks my message. I have no control over > > what my ISP does, these services simply block my message without a way > > for me to fix this. > > > > Please, don't use these blacklist services, they are very annoying. > > They think they can reduce spam, but only by blocking legitimate > > messages. I rather have 100 spam messages than losing one real message. > > Also, there is no reliable way to tell if a message is spam or not. > > Some of these services even ask money to be removed from the list, which > > is close to extortion. > > > > Specifically my message to George Reilly started failing today. > > Messages to Mattias Winther were blocked for a longer time. > > In most cases the problem lies with the receiving ISP (Matthias's and > George's, in this case). Some ISPs will drop on the floor incoming mail > that "they think" is spam, others let you customize your email account > to enable or disable filtering (but do they do what they say?), still > others will filter "spam" to someplace where you can inspect it (let's > say a webmail or IMAP folder other than Inbox). This way you may "fish > back" false positives, and in some cases, by marking both false > positives and false negatives (the latter being what spam went through > the filters without being recognized as such) "teach" a Bayesian > filtering system to recognize legit vs. spam mail with better and better > (though of course never perfect) accuracy.
It's indeed that the receiving ISP is the one refusing the mail. But it's worse than what you describe: they block ALL mail from a certain IP address. That this IP address is used by hundreds of thousands of users doesn't appear to make a difference. I'm sure that if you have so many users there are always a few that will send spam (through a botnet). > This possibility to inspect what was labeled as spam is why I switched > to Gmail (which offers it; I'm sure there are others); of course I have > to periodically check, on their webmail interface, "Trash" for spam that > was delivered to me over POP3 as legit and "Spam" for legit mail that > was held when it shouldn't have been. Sometimes mail from Gmail is also blocked... -- I'd like to meet the man who invented sex and see what he's working on now. /// Bram Moolenaar -- [email protected] -- http://www.Moolenaar.net \\\ /// sponsor Vim, vote for features -- http://www.Vim.org/sponsor/ \\\ \\\ download, build and distribute -- http://www.A-A-P.org /// \\\ help me help AIDS victims -- http://ICCF-Holland.org /// -- You received this message from the "vim_dev" maillist. Do not top-post! Type your reply below the text you are replying to. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php
